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Team:Northwestern/Team
From 2014.igem.org
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Outreach: teaching high schoolers about synthetic biology
David loves to run gels!
After another successful presentation session
Meet the team!
Tiffany Kwakwa
Tiffany loves french fries and the colors pink and sea foam green. She is a rising junior studying Environmental Engineering and how to recycle and reuse everything. In her spare time she can be found in bakeries or drinking tea.
Kristi Lui
Kristi has an odd sense of humor and is basically the wild child. When not pipetting, she’s usually watching one of many TV shows (but mainly Dexter) or studying for the MCAT.
Mitch Perkins
Mitch is a potential Anthropology major, but currently focusing on Biology. Constantly greeting team members with a “Yo!” and sharing pictures of his dog, there is no one else as chill, except maybe the -80 fridge.
Sharon Chen
When not studying for the MCAT, Sharon is in the lab or sleeping. Mainly sleeping. A rising senior Art History and Biology major, she loves cherries and expensive oatmeal.
David Lee
David is a rising star who has also risen into our hearts with his wit and charm. The other departments are jealous that he chose Biomedical Engineering. His only vice is his addiction to Game of Thrones, finishing 10 episodes in one night after returning from a day at the lab.
Adam Baker
Adam is a bassist and speed reader, going through multiple books in one sitting as well as the technical papers related to our project. He’s a rising junior Chemical Engineer who we fall back on for knowledge and fact recollection.
Abdullah Memon
Abdullah has been graced with the gift of amazing handwriting and tasteful quips. He’s a rising junior on a pre-med track to saving lives and making fat stacks.
Meet the advisors!
Dr. Josh Leonard Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University
Our group creates novel biological systems that perform customized, sophisticated functions for applications in biotechnology and medicine. Using the tools of synthetic biology, protein and biomolecule engineering, systems biology, and gene therapy, we develop technologies for manipulating and coordinating complex multicellular functions. A central area of interest for our group is controlling the function of a complex biological network - the human immune system – by engineering novel biomolecules and programmable cell-based “devices” to create novel, customized immune functions. By enabling clinicians to modify local immune responses in a patient- and disease-specific fashion, we are overcoming barriers to treatment for conditions ranging from cancer and chronic infections to autoimmune disease and transplant rejection. link
Our interdisciplinary efforts take advantage of synergies at the crossroads of biological and engineering science. They represent a bottom-up approach to synthetic biology. The key idea is that design and construction of biological systems will become easier and more reliable if we can develop foundational technologies that partition biology into simple modular pieces that we can directly manipulate and control. To this end, it is desirable to reduce the complexity of existing biological systems and remove unnecessary overhead (e.g. unnecessary genes and evolutionary baggage). Cell-free systems, which are decoupled from the genetic architecture of the cell, offer a unique platform to address this need. They reduce complexity, lack structural boundaries, are free from cell viability constraints, and can direct catalytic resources towards a single objective. As a result, cell-free systems promise to catalyze a new paradigm for studying, tuning, and controlling life. link
